We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Brian Scurfield brings some interesting developments in New Zealand to our attention
You might like to keep an eye on New Zealand politics, where a classic shit fight is taking place. And it was all started by Libertarianz leader Bernard Darnton, who is suing the NZ government for misappropriation of taxpayer money during election campaigning of 2005. For some background information check out Darnton vs. Clark, Not PC & David Farrar
Having misappropriated taxpayer money and facing a lawsuit, the New Zealand government now wants to ram through legislation validating their thievery. To divert attention, they threatened to dish the dirt on opposition MPs, resulting in the exposure of an affair by the opposition leader. The dirt has come right back at them, however, with allegations that the PM’s husband is gay and that her marriage is one of convenience. Entering into the equation, also, are Exclusive Brethren who may have been snooping on the Prime Minister and tales of the government hiring private investigators to snoop on the opposition.
While I do not give a damn about either the Prime Minister’s or the Leader of the Opposition’s personal lives, the amount of dirt being dished is an indication that the New Zealand government is in serious trouble.
In Hungary, when governments lie, people riot. In Thailand, the tanks roll in. What will happen in New Zealand? For the government has not only lied, it has also stolen taxpayer money to win an election.
“Allegations of corruption are intolerable in a Western liberal democracy.”
– Helen Clark, NZ Prime Minister
No, [Mrs.] Clark. Corruption is intolerable. When allegations of corruption are intolerable, it is no longer a Western liberal democracy
– VigesimalPundit
I wish these guys all the very best of luck in breaking the lock of the mainstream media on broadcast television in Britain and political coverage in particular. I am not sure if this outfit is going to feature a lot in my viewing habits, though. Given that I have to look at current affairs news quite a bit as part of my day job in London’s financial centre, I actually deliberately avoid too much of the same when I get home, preferring to read a book, go to the gym, see a movie or just hang out with my lovely wife. But for the political trainspotters out there, this sort of venture should be a boon.
My only carp at this stage is why choose such a dull name? Maybe there is some sort of perverse appeal about it.
There is a long and detailed report in the London Times today about the scale of gangland and police violence in Brazil’s Sao Paulo. If ever there was an account ramming home the distance between the image of Brazil as a fun-loving, sun-soaked nation and a country of enormous social and economic problems, this surely is it.
Brazil is one of those country’s that I would love to visit some day (I am a bit of a nut about Brazilian music). But stuff like this does not exactly get me rushing to get on the aircraft.
So Jesus and Moses walk into a bar. They take a moment to look around. After a moment they look at each other and breathe a sigh of relief. Moses looks at Jesus and says, ‘Thank God that Mohammad isn’t here. This joke could have led to riots.’
– Anonymous in a comment thread on Heliocentric is the hardest word
Is a credit card. But James, I hear you cry, the availability of capital credit supercharged Western civilisation’s development through the Renaissance and beyond, and a credit card is an instrument of a developed debt market – arguably the most socially beneficial institution we possess! Have you gone quite mad?
No, dear reader, just clumsy; I meant to write that the most ill-considered banking product ever devised is this credit card. It is a National Australia Bank (NAB) Visa Mini – confoundingly counter-intuitively, this card’s most notable feature is that it’s about half the size of a conventional credit card. Apparently this distinction alone will irresistibly and relentlessly reel in the target demographic – fashion conscious twenty-somethings (I think that might include me!) – but NAB has other slick devices in store to simultaneously deliver a KO in the coolness heavyweight championship of the banking world whilst obfuscating the somewhat steep interest rate levied on any transactions billed.
So let us dive in to this treasure-trove of modé. Before our young charges sally forth and actually use their Visa Mini cards to – you know – buy stuff, they need to know that The Bank wants them to be creative and flamboyant in the way they carry their card on their person, so it has thoughtfully provided some accessories to give each trendy young Visa Mini cardholder a dash of inspiration. Why not hang your Visa Mini on your mobile phone using the purpose-built attachment, o budding sophisticate? Does it look cool, and it is also great for the person who finds your misplaced Nokia; if they exhaust your mobile credit telephoning Siberian astrologers, they’ll be thanking their lucky stars because instant replenishment is quite literally on hand! Now that is convenience. Of course, NAB’s not saying we should trade the security for the superfabulous – ho ho, quite the opposite! Just read the small print on the “accessories” page (linked above):
Remember, you have to look after your Visa Mini Card and companion card as you would cash. So the best place to wear them is up close and personal.
Yes, yes, excellent advice. The long strap should come in handy for that. See? And where would we be without a safety clip? Silly question. For the truly elite – the style aristocracy – why not subtly incorporate the Visa Mini into a piece of bespoke jewellery, like so? Yes, it probably would require less effort to don a prominent sign displaying “ROB ME” painted in large flourescent letters and then wander down the darkest, dodgiest backstreet alley in an effort to discover a smackhead suffering profound withdrawal symptoms so you can shove your Visa Mini between his chattering teeth. But that’s simply not how they do it in Europe, philistine. So, point made and henceforth disregarding your obvious shortcomings, I’m sure by now your head is no doubt spinning with credit card couture-related possibilities. Yet do try to keep up, because what if I threw a choice of “five must-have metallic colours” into the mix? Yes, you heard the man – he said “must-have”. So that’ll be five Visa Minis for you, sir? Madam? Thought so – the experienced eye can always pick the slave to fashion! → Continue reading: The most ill-considered banking product ever devised
I have a technical question… the comment forms on Samizdata have formatting buttons for the text, but alas these only appear to work for people using Internet Explorer.
Does anyone know of a pop-up comment system we might be able to use which will allow push-button formatting to function in IE and Firefox, plus allow us to use our groovy graphics and is compatable with an anti-spam Turing test/captcha system similar to the one we have… all of which would work within Moveable Type (TypeKey is not an option)?
The recent typically well mannered coup d’etat in Thailand has been loudly depreciated by the usual people, with calls to ‘return to democratic government’ being made. But in truth in places like Thailand (or Turkey), the military acts as an informal check on the untrammelled political power of democratically elected politicians, rather like the Supreme Court in the United State or (theoretically) the House of Lords in the UK.
Just as the Supreme Court regularly thwarts the ability of impeccably democratically elected politician to pass laws pandering to the vox populi without howls for a ‘return to democratic government’, the military in Thailand is there to stomp on over-mighty politicos who try and break the commonly accepted boundaries of ‘the system’. Well mannered coups are (usually) the norm in Bangkok and should be thought of as a sort of common law ‘House’ of Lords engaging in a political ritual , rather like Black Rod bagging on the door of the Commons, it is just that the Thai ritual involves parking tanks and armoured personnel carriers in front of TV stations.
I take no position on whether of not this particular coup was a Good Idea as I just do not follow the day to day realities of Thai politics closely enough to make an informed guess, but the idea of the military acting as a check on democratic civilian government when conducted like this is really not offensive to me. I just see it as different sort of Supreme Court… with tanks.
By every measurable standard, interest and participation in the established political system is in freefall decline. Political parties of state who, only a generation ago, could boast of membership numbers in the millions, can now barely muster a few hundred thousand between them. The most apparent and immediate effect of this is a funding crisis, with both of the main parties now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
But, on the other hand, who needs voluntary donations when you can help yourself to some dollops of tax:
LABOUR wants taxpayers to plug a gaping hole in the party’s finances caused by a collapse in donations after the cash-for-peerages allegations.
Hazel Blears, the party chairman, told The Times yesterday that Labour, as the party of government, should get more public money to support political work.
There, problem solved. Can’t get people to give their money to you voluntarily? Then simply take it from them whether they like it or not. It’s not as if they will object or anything:
“That will mean, hopefully, you don’t have to go out and raise huge sums of money because there will be a level playing field….
“I think that is what the public wants…”
Want it? Why, they are crying our for it, demanding it, begging in the streets for it. In fact, I have no doubt that, within days, an ‘opinion poll’ confirming 100% public support for this measure will be cheerfully announced by every media outlet in the nation.
Ms. Blears will assuredly get her way. After all, we have a political establishment whose main (and perhaps even sole) preoccupation is now its own survival. In truth, it is a rotting carcass rolling around on its death bed gasping for a few more lungfuls of sweet oxygen.
A crisis of funding is easy to solve, if you have political power. A crisis of legitimacy is rather harder.
I know that the West’s struggle against communism in the twentieth century was merely a blip on the historical radar, whereas the struggle of Islam against all other cultures has been a constant of human history for almost 1400 years.
– Peter Saint-Andre
He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one”.
– Jesus Christ, according to Luke 22:36 (New International Version)
I was all set to concoct a posting called something like “Why I am not a Christian – reason number seventeen” ho ho, about how you can’t expect much in the way of a robust defence of Civilisation against Islamic barbarism from people whose basic belief about their enemies is that they should love them, turn the other cheek, etc.
And then (via Instapundit) comes this:
THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to “violent” Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope’s “extraordinarily effective and lucid” speech.
Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.
Carey even launched a new word, or at any rate one I’ve not heard before: “Westophobia”.
Don’t get me wrong, Carey perpetuates as many clichés as he challenges. For instance:
He said he agreed with his Muslim friends who claimed that true Islam is not a violent religion, …
Perish the thought. But at least …
… he wanted to know why Islam today had become associated with violence. “The Muslim world must address this matter with great urgency,” he said.
Simple, I’d say. The founder of Islam believed strongly in violence, was himself very good at it, and recommended it enthusiastically to his followers. They have obliged, century after century after century.
But still, you can feel the Western brain cells being rubbed together. See also – another example among many – this rather blunter pronouncement along similar lines. And, for a response to all this moderate Muslim guff, see also this recent blog posting from Peter Saint André.
The idea that the West’s response to the Islamic challenge will only ever consist of the first hasty and opposed responses to 9/11, which were entirely what people already thought – “We all ought to get along better”, “We are provoking them”, “They must become more democratic”, and so on – is very foolish. The West – a vague label I know but it will serve – is the most formidable civilisation that the world has yet seen. It has faced down several recent and major challenges to its hegemony, and it will face down this one, I think, with whatever combination of sweet reason and cataclysmic brutality turns out to be necessary to get the job done. This challenge now seems bigger than the earlier ones. But they always do at the time, don’t they?
I cannot find on the internet the full text of Carey’s speech. If it can all be linked to, my apologies for suggesting otherwise, and could someone else please supply a link?. If it cannot be linked to, then, given the incendiary nature of this debate, this is an error that should be speedily corrected. The technology is now in place to spare us from having to rely on journalists to tell us what is in potentially important pronouncements of this sort, and it should be used.
UPDATE: Link to the full Carey speech. Thanks Julian.
I dislike ‘push’ advertising, no, I hate ‘push’ advertising and go out of my way to avoid products advertised in ways that annoy me, the sort that tries to shove what you are doing aside and force their goddamn product in your face… and a prime example is those web banners advertising animated ‘similes’ that play audible intensely annoying sounds as you are browsing, shouting “Say something! What?” at you. My usual response is to rather pointlessly yell “Piss off!” at my monitor.
I regularly and quixotically write to websites running these accursed advertisements and tell them I will never return as long as they run audible advertisements. One site did agree they were unacceptably intrusive but sadly a couple weeks on they are still running the damn things. Does anyone know of some way to turn off unsolicited sounds in Internet Explorer so I do not have these moronic things inflicted on me when I arrive on some site?
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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